Monday, 15 February 2016

Chromatics

Chromatics is a
new anthology from Lycopolis Press and is edited by Dean M Drinkel. It contains
eleven stories based on the theme of colour – an original concept for a
collection of horror stories. It has to be said that the theme is tangential at
best in some of the stories but that doesn’t distract from what I found to be a
strong collection overall.

The book opens with Anthony Cowin’s The Sand Was Made of Mountains – an elegant piece of prose writing
which features a creature called The Catcher in the Sand – drawing immediate
comparison with a certain book by J D Salinger. One interpretation of that
famous book is that it’s about war and that’s certainly the case with Anthony’s
story, featuring a protagonist who is a refugee fleeing from Syria. Topical
then, and – in lesser hands – potentially exploitative but that’s absolutely
not the case here with the resulting story a subtle, elegiac rumination on the
horrors that arise from conflict.

Paul M Feeney uses the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear
processing plant as the backdrop for his story The Black God. I have to admit to more than a passing interest in
the subject (and can heartily recommend Piers Paul Read’s account of the
disaster Ablaze) and have a distinct memory
of a TV documentary filmed in the abandoned city of Pripyat. Scenes of the deserted
streets were eerie enough – a true post-apocalyptic vision – but really disturbing
was the shot of a mysterious figure spotted by the camera crew high up in the
window of an abandoned skyscraper. It’s an image that’s remained with me for
over twenty years, and one which still gives me shivers and I have to say that
I got the same feelings when reading Paul’s story. He creates a wonderful atmosphere
here, building a sense of paranoia which goes beyond that of just strangers in
a strange land which culminates in something truly dark.

Beige is not the
colour of blandness but madness in the story by Martin Roberts. A first person
narration from a suitably unreliable narrator leads along the path of delusion
towards a tragic revelation. Raven Dane’s The
White Room centres around strange goings-on around an abandoned, decaying
mansion in a generation-spanning period piece. Those goings-on are explained
but I felt the story was possibly too short to contain the ideas within, making
it feel like an extract from a longer work.

I loved the concept behind Restoring Scarlet by Dave Jeffrey which gives us a mortician with
some very special skills at restoration. It’s another first person narrative
which is cleverly constructed so that the readers’ sympathies change over the
course of the story, continuously wrong-footing them and leading them towards a
chilling conclusion. I loved it.

Xanthos by Wayne
Goodchild is probably a little too burdened-under by references to the mythology
created by Robert Chambers’ The King in
Yellow to stand on its own two feet and would have worked better in an
anthology dedicated to the author. That said, it’s the second time Dean has
published this story of a playwright with a fear of the colour yellow so who am
I to argue..?

Born From the Greens is
the first published story by Zak A Ferguson. There’s plenty enough in this
story of something monstrous growing in the garden but there’s a little
(understandable) naivete to the writing, occasionally pathos becomes bathos and
some of the more flowery passages could have done with a little pruning. With all
my gardening metaphors used up now what Ican say is that there’s plenty imagination on show here and, with a
little technical refinement great things could lie ahead for Zak.

The Spiritual Room by
Christopher Beck gave me a few problems. Its subject matter – childhood abuse –
is a really tricky one to pull off successfully (by which I mean not in an
exploitative way). I really don’t think the author succeeded in this respect,
pitching the tone of the story way off. Subtlety and discretion would be more
effective – neither of which are on display here.

This is the Colour of
Blood by Mark West gives us another outing for his recurring character Mike
Decker. It’s an entertaining romp involving Russian gangsters and secret
rituals but I don’t think it’s Mark’s best work. I’m still not entirely sure
why Decker is involved in the case in the first place other than as a device to
move the plot forward – my feeling is that Mark had the conclusion in his head
first and then worked backwards to find a way of getting to it.

Anthropocene is by
Charles Rudkin and provides an allegorical tale with post-apocalyptic imagery
in which colour has disappeared from the earth. The sighting of a dragon in
Antarctica may herald a return to some kind of normality. It’s an intriguing
story, full of interesting images and allusive dialogue. It’s thoughtful and
thought-provoking but suffers a little from being divided up into headed
sections.

The collection heads off into the sunset (somewhat appropriately)
with Dean M Drinkel’s Dans le Rouge du
Couchant. Well now, this was unexpected. Unexpected in that this is a
horror anthology and, although there’s darkness creeping around this story like
mist on the surface of the Seine, it’s not truly a horror story. It is an
excellent story though – a dark love story set in Paris which perfectly
captures the paranoia and concerns that accompany any new relationship. (Oh,
and the romance of course). There’s a growing sense of dread which develops as
the story progresses and the conclusion, although not entirely unexpected, is
hard-hitting. I’m not sure why Dean included it in this particular book – but I’m
glad he did.

All in all then a strong collection of stories. A couple of
stumbles along the way but containing at least four stories which are worth the
admission price on their own.